


Listen to the fireplace roar

by Believerindaydreams (deepandlovelydark)



Series: Raging against the machine [5]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Comedy, Established Relationship, Fucking, Home, M/M, Philosophy, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/Believerindaydreams
Summary: It's not an anniversary, or a holiday, or a celebration today in the Mojave; just the thirty-second day since the Divide, and Arcade reckons they deserve a break.A dirty one, preferably.
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Arcade Gannon
Series: Raging against the machine [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100771
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

"Permission to court Arcade? My my, that's a trifle old fashioned, isn't it?" Daisy props the sniper rifle over her back, gives a little wave to Boone as they exit the dinosaur's mouth.

Benny shrugs. "He's welcome to ask my mother if he wants to...we're like that in the Boot Riders is all. Fucking is one thing, but where marriage is concerned you ask the matriarch."

"You could hardly consider me the matriarch of anything. And I didn't raise that boy to just take orders from anyone, especially one of...us."

"Orders about what?" Arcade's left off his coat in the Mojave heatwave, and his lover down to sharp black trousers and a blue shirt rolled up to the elbows makes him momentarily wish that Daisy wasn't here, or indeed the rest of the population of Novac.

Lover, heh. The thing he most regrets about all this is giving up that fond familiar term for a new and alien one.

"Anything," Daisy says mildly. "I won't spoil the surprise if Benny hasn't told you yet."

"...if he hadn't told you- uh, okay. I can wait." He throws Benny a confused look, gets a cheerful stonewall of a response.

Really, there's no need to inform Daisy that he let famously laidback Arcade Gannon be the one to propose first.

***

*one week earlier*

"I'm prescribing you a break. Medically."

"House had a point plugging himself into a mainframe," Benny growls, tossing yet another clipboard into the ever-growing stack besides him. "It would save a lot of trouble to do this all mentally- do you know how many pages of negotiations I'm dealing with for the sharecropper farms alone?"

"No, and that isn't the point. You need to stop acting like we're in perpetual crisis mode, the war's been over for a month-"

"The crises don't stop just because of a sudden outbreak of peace."

"You've got Swank. You've got a room full of clerks back there," Arcade says, gesturing. The Tops presidential suite is almost unrecognizable now from its earlier iteration as a swinger pad; there are charts on the walls, hurrying subordinates, and the bar has been cleared of liquor in favor of a shiny new terminal for Benny's private use. "You have responsibilities, yes, but you need to ease off at some point. Unless you actually want everyone to start thinking you're another Mr House in the making."

Not only has the thought occurred to him, now wasn't even for the first time today, but- you can hardly say that to Arcade.

"I couldn't relax here if I wanted to. Look at this mess. There isn't a place in New Vegas where I could go without having a lot of hangers on trying to get my attention, at least I can hear myself think in here."

"True. That's why I bought a house."

"The fuck- you what?" Squatting is one thing. Actually, literally, owning property, putting in for an official deed claim with the antiquated RobCo property machinery...not only is it an incredible pain, it's incredibly expensive. Even the Kings didn't bother with that, and the Old Mormon Fort is technically rented.

"Well. I had a few gold bars burning a hole in my pocket...and some free time, since the horrendous bloodbath of a New Vegas conquest singularly failed to happen."

"I thought you were donating that to the Followers."

"I thought it'd be good to use it for purposes that advance a Follower agenda. Such as insuring that our newly independent city-state has the opportunity to demonstrate it can exist without its interim dictator." Arcade leans over the bar, kisses his forehead in a gently, oddly chaste way.

It seems odd to Benny at first, until Arcade pulls back and he realises they have company. There is no way everyone from the back office needed a pencil all at the same time.

Well, if there's an audience he might as well live up to it. Benny flicks them a smile, adjusts the folds of his collar. "That's different. If you wanted to sweep me off my feet for a long dirty weekend, why didn't you start with the lead?"

He pulls Arcade close for a much more enthusiastic embrace, lips and tongues interlocked, until the doctor actually overbalances. For one terrifying moment he thinks he'll lose control, helplessly watch Arcade go falling headfirst into the wall or the floor or something equally painful.

It doesn't happen. He sustains the weight, until Arcade manages to pull back and stand up again, apparently unaware that anything could have happened. It's all right. They're all right.

"The things I'll do to advance a healthy socio-political agenda," his lover retorts, rather pink-faced, to general clapping and cheers.

***

Phoenix Point, the house is called; and Benny almost regrets it. 

It's right across the street from an old tools factory, one of the places he'd resorted to while hunting up Lucky 38 access codes, heart in his mouth every minute. It hasn't been long before he'd known that Arcade's gambit with the Fiends had ended with his rescue by the courier; it had been considerably more worrying, that she had him than they. Fiends being killable.

Marilyn...he still has nightmares, justified ones.

The mistrust eases as Arcade opens the small barbed wire gate, though- it's pre-war security, with a physical and electrical lock. The outer door offers a hefty piece of metal plating, impenetrable to two centuries of decay.

This better not be like a vault. Arcade knows his opinion on those- 

but then his lover unlocks the door and lets them inside, and it isn't like that at all.

Light, that's the first thing he notices. Real sunlight, glinting off the water in an open courtyard- a reservoir then, water to waste. That's an immediately soothing sight right there, unmitigated luxury for anyone raised to Mojave dust.

He makes for it immediately, tasting its sweet clarity- no rads, the Pip-Boy silence confirms that. In place of a Geiger counter he can hear Mr New Vegas, endlessly ruminating about love; and the faint whistle of a stewpot on the boil.

And his lover's quick breathing, behind him.

Benny turns, grins at Arcade's self-conscious pose; lying down but with an elbow propping up his chin, all that height shown off even horizontally as compared to the array of ferns and broc flowers behind him. "Is the rest of it this nice?"

"I certainly hope so. I went to more trouble than I needed to, perhaps- the Lucky 38 has been, uh, liberated of a number of books. Brought out some supplies for the workshop, that kind of thing...put together a wardrobe for you," Arcade says, looking very nearly pained. "Even articles that I do not have any comprehension why a sane person would wear." 

Benny laughs, but can't sustain it; too much at once, too deeply meant to him. "I love it. I love it already, I love you."

"You haven't even seen it yet."

He draws his lover close, the scent of herbs and animal warmth and the brightening light of the Strip all melding together into one glorious sensation. "I will. Because..."

He doesn't know how to say how a home is holy to him, or how there's no one else in the world he would trust to shape it for him. Or how to say anything at all that means what he needs it to, when words are his worthless stock in trade.

"Because it's you," he says eventually; because that's honest.

Arcade laughs, strokes his hair. "Glad to hear it. Imagine trying to woo the Chairman of the Tops without a reasonably impressive dowry."

That rings false, he almost pulls away. "You don't need to buy me."

"I thought you appreciated that kind of ironic backchat."

"I do, but...not from you. Not with that sincere Followers face of yours." With that ready impatience for the truly immoral, the willingness to speak truth to power. "You're my moral center. Keep on keeping me honest, please."

Arcade favors him with a distinctly stunned expression. "Oddly, I'm rather in the habit of thinking that's what you are to me. You're braver than I am, as far as accepting the risk of failure to try to steer towards better outcomes. There are times when indecision itself can become paralysing."

The sunset isn't visible from behind the high fencing, but there's a rich blueness fading to purple above them. "In that case...carpe diem?"

"Seize the day?"

"Is that what it means? The impression I got was that it meant something more like 'jump my bones'. That'll teach me to listen to ex-Legion prostitutes."

"...you have a profoundly terrible sense of timing," Arcade murmurs, and rolls over on top of him.

"Uh."

"Carpe diem, then?"

Maybe his voice does fail him; but he kisses his way into a yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phoenix Point is a real mod, available on the Nexus. I fell in love with it on download.


	2. Chapter 2

You have to admit, Benny Gecko's greed rubs off.

Before the Legion camp, before the courier, you wouldn't have dreamed of anything like this home for yourself. Pushing forty and still helping out at the Mormon Fort, when most doctors stay a few years before fleeing back to the security of the NCR, their conviction ebbed away in the face of frontier realities.

You'd stayed, because you hadn't had anywhere else to go; and because you thought you hadn't deserved better.

Marilyn had certainly done her best to prove that one.

But saving another life meant saving your own; and Benny is securely self-confident in ways that defy belief, smart enough to upend the Mojave, too stupid to be afraid of you. Somehow. For everything that you are, or could be.

Right now he's snoring with his head against your breastbone, as though he dreams you're safe.

"Benny, wake up. It isn't getting any warmer out here."

He keeps right on sleeping, and you shiver some in the twilight- no way of telling how late it is, even in North Vegas the light of the Strip will drown out the stars all night. There's a moon, but vague childhood memory doesn't help much there.

(Orion tried to drill that info into you, in case you ever needed it. Judah had been the one to catch the leather belt, leaving you afraid but untouched.)

You hug your lover closer, and the memory trickles away again.

It's not so bad being out here, at that. Cold makes your lover all the sweeter to hold, and the deprivation of hunger is muted by the knowledge that there's more than enough if you wanted, inside. Indulging in sentiment is a wildly different beast than real deprivation. The lab coat you wear so proudly will cover two, applied properly-

"Mmfth? Arcade, where the hell are we?"

"Besides your new swimming pool."

Benny grunts, stands up to stretch a kink out of his back. "Ugh. Wake me up next time, willya? Cool cats may sleep in alleys, but I'll settle for a bed."

So you go inside, where the rocket stove has built up a delicious warmth, going straight to the bone marrow; and that's good too.

Benny heads straight for the liquor cabinet, chuckles at the selection, settles for a beer- maybe that means something, maybe in forty years time you'll know all the tells like that. Desire quivering in your blood like drunkenness. The prospect of having a future to grow old in.

"I'll stock that up. The upstairs bartender at the Gomorrah keeps a few bottles of pre-war wines to grease the skids."

"Are they really?"

"I mean, I wouldn't lay money on that. But it isn't your average NCR two-buck rotgut at least."

He grins and twists the bottle cap off with practiced delicacy, pockets it and drinks while looking around with sharp practiced eyes. Assessing, appreciating, but something more mellow there too, a look that hasn't been his since the Tops turned into New Vegas' bureaucratic ground zero. He's spent too long protecting it, imaging ways it could be taken away, for him to be entirely comfortable there again.

You take an ice-cold Nuka from the fridge, and a rum, and start downing a sweet mixer. Here, maybe, it'll be different. Outside it's just Fiend territory, and the two of you know how to handle those. Even without the power armor left fragmented in the Divide.

Thoughts fragmenting a little, the liquor hitting fast. If you'd come to rely on that armor, believed in it as part of your identity, maybe the loss would have come harder; but you're not the same as your tools. It kept you safe when it mattered.

Benny is still hunting around the place, quick avid eyes hunting for secrets- he switches lights on and off, opens all the cupboard doors, chortles at the secret passage to the cellar workshop. "Finally, a place with enough storage space. Not bad."

He raises the beer to his lips, drinks; you succumb to temptation and kiss foam off his lips extemporaneously.

Lovers make poor confidants, you can hear yourself saying to the courier. This is harder than it looks. It's like playacting a romance, a performance soap bubble guaranteed to vanish with the sunrise.

And people are so very fragile in the Mojave. You press against the thin fabric of that ridiculous lucky suit, hoping that physical evidence will assuage you where sense and sensibility haven't.

"If you're going to be like that," Benny says, between applications of the bottle. "Let's find the bed. A place like this, I imagine it's a good one."

"Up the stairs to the left." Too much practice in disaster, to lose your tongue just because of a firm fondle around your rear.

Benny laughs again, and guides you up the stairs as if he's the one who knows the place.

Bed is a luxurious queen size, done up in bedding that was washed this week and not last century, courtesy of the last functioning laundromat in Freeside. Abraxo's strong scent a trifle mollified, by the confounding mystery of an electric fireplace that tastes of woodsmoke.

"...sweet rads, Arcade, you really pulled out all the stops."

"There are shutters, if you want to see the Strip." Bulletproof security gives way to the neon splurge of distant light. Benny exclaims in pleasure, sticks his head out the window to drop cigarette ash onto a corrugated iron awning.

"Sorry. Dying for a smoke, I figure it's better now than interrupting us later."

"No worries." It still smells wrong, but after the Legion camp, soldiers glaring at Benny for defiling their measured sanctity with irreverent chems, it's the kind of wrong that brings comfort in its wake.

"Any ideas on how you want to- ah- christen the bed?"

"Take me down and roll me out, cupcake, I don't mind how this swings. Your picnic, baby, your show."

Wow, offers the part of your brain that's rapidly succumbing to the effect of alcohol on an empty stomach. What a remarkably unhelpful statement.

Benny has one foot poised on a priceless rifle cabinet and his greased hair is fluttering slightly from the window breeze, and the whole picture does things to your circulatory system that under normal circumstances would have you reaching for a stimpak. "In that case, I'll just...start by undressing."

"Oh, a stripping routine?" Benny puffs out effortlessly, classier than anyone with his attire and general disposition should be allowed to look. "Right on, sugarlips."

For the love of water, he's taking a simple mechanical prelude to the actual fucking as if it's the sexiest thing in the Wasteland.

Only, the way his eyes follow you as you strip off the familiar filthy coat and undo shirt cuffs suggests it is. Off with the belt and packs, away with the shirt-

He rests two fingers on your shoulder, so lightly you wouldn't feel him if it wasn't bare. "You sure this is something you want to do right now, cupcake? All that booze?"

"Get in bed and find out." In as close an imitation of his incomprehensible slang as you can manage. It's not very good.

He stubs the cigarette out against the shutter, falls dramatically against the bed. "Go ahead and strip me then."

It's part and parcel of being a doctor that you can't do this simply, without a radio station in your head tuned to medical evaluation even as you slide off jacket and trousers, every inch of that lucky suit laid neatly on a chair. Scars here, unexplained tattoo there, the marks of a hard life in the Mojave laid out in history made flesh. It is very susceptible and very beautiful at once, heart-wringing for the wounds scabbed over and soothing for its persistence. Sex is always the balance between the purifying and the ludicrous, your busy mind likes to sate itself on diagnostic while the rest of you is caught up in passion. Just the way you're built. It doesn't hurt any.

Benny's a goddamn pillow princess and lazy in bed, but he helps remove your trousers this time, the two of you stripping each other to bare skin. His hands find your cock, already growing interested; you find his and find it to be disappointingly inert.

"Something wrong?"

" Hell, I'm probably just done in after that batch in the garden. Tell you what, a little Buffout, a little juicer, I should be right with you."

"...not like that." You will, possibly, never be able to tell when he lies, but this doesn't stack up to prior experience. Experiences. "What's wrong? Am I rushing you?"

"No, I don't think- maybe," Benny admits, chagrin written over his face. "This house, everything- it's too much. Fuck, this'll take some getting used to. Seven years running the Tops and I still think of a place like this as a luxury for my betters, you dig?" He squeezes lightly with one hand, strokes along your ribcage with the other.

"You don't have any betters." Sensation be damned when there's a philosophical point to be made. Difficult as that may be in his practiced grasp. "You deserve this as much as- ah- any one in the Mojave-"

"Whoa, kitten, you'll be bad for my limitless ego. It's just a matter of getting used to it, okay? We have time, we'll get there. But meanwhile I have a bottlecap says you need a special delivery even if I don't."

It takes a moment to disentangle thoughts of Marilyn from standard Vegas slang, and then another to try to muster a functional argument, and then there aren't any more moments, because your chronic patience does not carry through to the bedchamber and Benny knows that, hurrying you along until you're blacking out to bliss-

how long it is before you're cognizant again, you aren't sure. Long enough that Benny has had time to clean you off, that's thoughtful.

"I can't possibly let that go unreciprocated."

"Don't worry about it, cupcake. Keeping score is for teenagers."

"...if you can't get it up in the house, why not outside?" That has to be the alcohol talking. Or Benny's boyfriend. Or both.

"You mean a rematch by the pool? Not a bad idea from the fertile delta of Arcade's idea garden, I'll drink to that."

...whatever that means. Too many stairs to negotiate going back down. "I mean right here. On the bedroom awning."

"The one made of cast iron? With a clear line of sight for anyone prancing down the street? Two feet across to a hard fall on concrete?"

"...um."

Benny grins, grabs a fluffy pillow. "Baby, you know how to activate my danger kink like nothing else. Lead on, Macbeth."

He means Macduff, but never mind, the thought's there.

Intellectual quibbling can take a back seat to some extremely serious fucking, for once in a way.


End file.
